1. For more on this metaphor, and specifically on how Stalin intended it, see Ruder, Cynthia A., Making History for Stalin: The Story of the Belomor Canal (Gainesville, 1998), esp. 44–45;Google Scholar Nicholas's, Mary A. Writers at Work: Russian Production Navels and the Construction of Soviet Culture (Lewisburg, 2010)Google Scholar is also useful. A similar trope of this era was the comparison of society to a machine. See Clark, Katerina, “Little Heroes and Big Deeds: Literature Responds to the First Five-Year Plan,” in Fitzpatrick, Sheila, ed., Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928-1931 (Bloomington, 1978), 189.Google Scholar

2. Cited by Lampert, Nicholas, The Technical Intelligentsia and the Soviet State: A Study of Soviet Managers and Technicians, 1928-1935 (London, 1979), 27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. Clark, Katerina, “Engineers of Human Souls in an Age of Industrialization: Changing Cultural Models, 1929-41,” in Rosenberg, William G. and Siegelbaum, Lewis H., eds., Social Dimensions of Soviet Industrialization (Bloomington, 1993), 250.Google Scholar

4. See, for example, Curtis, Julie, “A Theatrical Battle of Wits: Bulgakov, Maiakovskii and Meierkhol’ d,” Modern Language Review 110, no. 3 (July 2013)Google Scholar, for an overview of the fates of this politically diverse trio of writers under Stalin. For a case study of the political persecution of a leading engineer, see Graham's, Loren account of the fate of Petr Pal–chinskii in The Ghost of the Executed Engineer: Technology and the Fall of the Soviet Union (Cambridge, Mass., 1993).Google Scholar

5. I am indebted to Sibelan Forrester for the analogy between Tolstoi's attack on his engineer-heroes and the overall decline of the fantastic genre in Soviet Russia under Stalin. See also Maguire, Patrick, Red Stars: Political Aspects of Soviet Science Fiction (Ann Arbor, 1985).Google Scholar

6. Pushkin, Aleksandr, Pikovaia dama, in Pushkin, Romany i povesti (Moscow, 1961), 211.Google Scholar

7. Beliaev wrote the second, 1935 edition of Pryzhok v nichto in consultation with the rocket engineer Konstantin Tsiolkovskii; the main character, Engineer Tsander, is named in honor of the real-life Latvian-born rocket engineer and space-flight theorist Fridrikh Tsander (1887-1933).

8. Bailes, Kendall E., Technology and Society under Lenin and Stalin: Origins of the Soviet Technical Intelligentsia, 1917-1941 (Princeton, 1978), 116.Google Scholar

9. See Clark, “Engineers of Human Souls in an Age of Industrialization.“

10. Bulgakov, Mikhail, Kopyto inzhenera, in Bulgakov, “Moi bednyi, bednyi master …“: Polnoe sobranie redaktsii i variantov romana “Master i Margarita,” ed. Losev, Viktor (Moscow, 2006), 56.Google Scholar Ali translations are my own unless otherwise noted.

11. See Colvin, Sarah, “Mephistopheles, Metaphors, and the Problem of Meaning in Faust,” Publications of the English Goethe Society 79, no. 3 (November 2010): 162 Google Scholar, for discussion of Voland's origins.

12. Siegelbaum, Lewis H., Soviet State and Society between Revolutions, 1918-1928 (Cambridge, Eng., 1994), 216.Google Scholar

13. The chase scene occurs in a slightly later draft, Vecherstrashnoi subboty (1929-31); the Berlioz character bas already perished and Ivanushka is being questioned in a psychiatrie hospital. From here, he attempts to ring the Kremlin to demand that the engineer (whose name, be thinks, begins with B) be pursued. A later chapter of this draft is called “Konsul'tant skopytom” (The Consultant with the Hoof), rendering the engineer's Satanic overtones still more explicit. Bulgakov, Vecher strashnoi subboty, in “Moi bednyi, bednyi master ...,“74 and 69.

14. Milne, Lesley, Mikhail Bulgakov: A Critical Biography (Cambridge, Eng., 1990), 175.Google Scholar

15. See Graham, , Ghost of the Executed Engineer, 20–22.Google Scholar

16. See Bailes, Technology and Society under Lenin and Stalin, 58–65.Google Scholar

17. Ibid., 4.

18. Josephson, Paul R., ‘“Projects of the Century’ in Soviet History: Large-Scale Technologies from Lenin to Gorbachev,” Technology and Culture 36, no. 3 (July 1995): 521.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19. For these figures, see Lampert, Technical Intelligentsia, 39-40. Besides Lampert, an excellent overall study of the industrial trials of this period is Bailes, Technology and Society under Lenin and Stalin, esp. chap. 3, “The Shakhty Affair,” 69-94; additionally see Kuromiya, Hiroaki, Stalin's Industrial Revolution: Politics and Workers, 1928-1932 (Cambridge, Eng., 1988).Google Scholar

20. Bailes, Kendall E., “The Politics of Technology: Stalin and Technocratie Thinking among Soviet Engineers,” American Historical Review 79, no. 2 (April 1974): 463.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21. Stalin, Iosif, “Novaia obstanovka-novye zadachi khoziaistvennogo stroitel ‘stva; rech’ na soveshchanii khoziaistvennikov” (Moscow, 1932), 29.Google Scholar

22. Elena Dmitrievna Tolstaia describes how Tolstoi's pro-Bolshevik stance led to bis graduai exclusion from émigré social and literary circles, despite Maksim Gor'kii's continued support; the young Vladimir Nabokov apparently caricatured Tolstoi as the pretentious writer and critic Bubnov in Podvig (Glory, 1932 ). See Tolstaia, Elena, “Degot’ ili med“: Aleksei N. Tolstoi kak neizvestnyi pisatel’ (Moscow, 2006), 472.Google Scholar

23. See Platt, Kevin M. F., “Rehabilitation and Afterimage: Aleksei Tolstoi's Many Returns to Peter the Great,” in Platt, Kevin and Brandenberger, David, eds., Epic Revisionism: Russian History and Literature as Stalinist Propaganda (Madison, 2006), 47.Google ScholarSee also Senelick, Laurence, “Alexey Tolstoy,” in vol. 1 of McGraw-Hill Encyclopaedia of World Drama, ed. Hochman, Stanley (New York, 1984), 31.Google Scholar

24. Platt, , “Rehabilitation and Afterimage,” esp. 64–66.Google Scholar

25. Tolstoi, A. N., “Otkrytoe pis'mo N. V. Chaikovskomu,” in Tolstoi, A. N., Sobranie sochinenii v 10 tomakh (Moscow, 1986), 10:49.Google Scholar

26. Britikov, A. F., Russkii Sovetskii nauchno-fantasticheskii roman (Leningrad, 1970), 56.Google ScholarSee also Tolstaia, “Degot’ ili med,” 474: “Teper’ Tolstoi delaet sleduiushchii khod: ‘Sumasshedshaia vera v preobrazhenie rodiny’ pretvoriaetsia v mezhplanetnye ambitsii ‘Aelity.“'

27. For an overview of critics’ responses to Aelita in Krasnoe znamia and Krasnaia nov', see Maguire, Robert A., Red Virgin Soil: Soviet Literature in the 1920s (Evanston, 2000), 249–51.Google Scholar

28. See, for example, Kh. I. Khalil, “O zhanrovykh osobennostiakh romana A. N. Tolstogo ‘Aelita“’ (PhD diss. abstract, St. Petersburg State Herzen Pedagogical University, 2008), at elibrary.ru/item.asp?id=11692556 (last accessed 1 March 2013).

29. There are five variants of Giperboloid inzhenera Garina (1925-26, 1927, 1934, 1936, and 1939) and two of Aelita (1922-23 and 1939); unless otherwise stated, citations are from the 1939 texts reprinted in Tolstoi, Sobranie sochinenii. See A. M. Kriukova's notes to Aelita, in Tolstoi, Sobranie sochinenii, 3:600-601, and A. A. Aleksandrova's notes to Giperboloid inzhenera Garina, in Tolstoi, Sobranie sochinenii, 4:750-56. The 1936 edition, which develops the positive Soviet character Gusev, contains the most significant additions to the original.

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31. His play Bunt mashin (Revoit of the Machines, 1924) was almost wholly adapted from Karl Ĉapek's R.U.R. (1920). See William E. Harkins, “Karel Ĉapek's R.U.R. and Tolstoj's, A. N. Revoit of the Machines,” Slavic and East European Journal 4, no. 4 (Winter 1960): 312–18.Google Scholar

32. Britikov, , Russkii Sovetskii nauchno-fantasticheskii roman, 68.Google Scholar For an overview of science fiction influences on Bogdanov, see Stites, Richard, “Fantasy and Revolution: Alexander Bogdanov and the Origins of Bolshevik Science Fiction,” in Bogdanov, Alexander, Red Star: The First Bolshevik Utopia, trans. Rougie, Charles (Bloomington, 1984): 1–16 (esp. 3-5).Google Scholar For a discussion of French, Russian, British, and American science fiction on the Mars theme and how it influenced Russian writers, see Slusser, George, “The Martians among Us: Wells and the Strugatskys,” in Hendrix, Howard V., Slusser, George, and Rabkin, Eric S., eds., Visions of Mars: Essays on the Red Planet in Fiction and Science (Jefferson, N.C., 2011), 56 (esp. 57-61).Google Scholar

33. For examples of contemporaneous “catastrophe” plots, see Suvin, Darko, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre (New Haven, 1979), 262.Google Scholar

34. For more on the surprising ubiquity of the demon in Russian literature, see Connolly, Julian, The Intimate Stranger: Meetings with the Devil in Russian Literature (New York, 2001).Google Scholar Connolly describes the Russian fictional demon as simultaneously “alien, and yet hauntingly familiar” (9).

35. Vaingurt, Julia discusses the symbolism and significance of eggs in the early Soviet aesthetic imagination in her recent article, “The Anatomy of Spaceflight: Rockets and Other Mechanical Eggs in Russian Modernism,” Russian Literature 69, no. 2/3/4 (2011): 291–308.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36. See Tolstoi, Aleksei, Aelita, in Tolstoi, Sobranie sochinenii, 3:310.Google Scholar

37. Ibid., 3:441.

38. Los“'s indefinite age, and Mars's ever-receding opportunities for renewal, reflect Tolstoi's fascination with Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West (1918). For more about Spengler's influence on Tolstoi, see Streidter, Jurij, “Three Postrevolutionary Russian Novels,” in Garrard, John, ed., The Russian Novel [rom Pushkin to Pasternak (New Haven, 1983), 177;Google Scholar and Baranov, Vadim, ‘“Revoliutsiia-kosmos- liubov“': ‘Aelita’ i sovetskaia literatura nachala 20-kh godov,” in Baranov, , Revoliutsiia i sud” ba khudozhnika: A. Tolstoi i ego put’ k sotsialisticheskomu realizmu (Moscow, 1967), 211.Google Scholar

39. Tolstoi, , Aelita, 3:310.Google Scholar

40. Ibid., 3:379.

41. Britikov, , Russkii Sovetskii nauchno-fantasticheskii roman, 62.Google Scholar Agurskii cited by Varlamov, Aleksei, Aleksei Tolstoi (Moscow, 2008), 283.Google Scholar

42. Kolobaeva, L. A., “Problema polozhitel“nogo geroia v romane A. N. Tolstogo ‘Aelita,“’ in Alpatova, A. V. and Poliak, L. M., eds., TVorchestvo A. N. Tolstogo: Sbornik stat'ei (Moscow, 1957), 42.Google Scholar

43. For the 1923version cited here, see Aleksei Tolstoi, Aelita, at az.lib.ru/t/tolstoj_a_n/ text_0160.shtml (last accessed 1March 2013). For Kolobaeva's comments, see “Problema polozhitel'nogo geroia v romane A. N. Tolstogo,” 53-54.

44. Tolstoi, , Aelita, 3:443–44Google Scholar.

45. A popular slogan of the late 1920s was “We must break the writer's individual– ism!” See Clark, , “Little Heroes and Big Deeds,” 198.Google Scholar

46. Cited by Lazarev, V. A., Iz istorii literaturnykh otnoshenii pervoi chetverti dvadtsatogo stoletiia (Moscow, 1962), 166.Google Scholar

47. Platt, , “Rehabilitation and Afterimage,” 63.Google Scholar

48. The “drevn[iaia] chertovshchin[a]” (ancient black magic) denounced by Gor as he resists Tuskub's influence. Tolstoi, Aelita, 3:398.

49. Ibid., 3:353.

50. Ibid., 3:377. As Britikov points out, Tuskub and Garin both share “a monstrous love of power” (chudovyshnoe vlastoliubie). Britikov, Russkii Sovetskii nauchno-fantasticheskii roman, 61.

51. Tolstoi, Aelita, 3:396.

52. Gakov, Vladimir, “Laser Ray in 1926: Alexei Tolstoy's Science Fiction,” Sovetskaia literatura, no. 418 (1983): 166.Google Scholar

53. Tolstoi, Aleksei, Soiuz piati: Rasskazy (Leningrad, 1925), 38.Google Scholar

54. Ibid., 23 and 43.

55. Ibid., 43.

56. Ibid., 23.

57. Ibid., 55.

58. Ibid., 57.

59. Tolstoi, Aleksei, Giperboloid inzhenera Garina, in Tolstoi, Sobranie sochinenii, 4:192.Google Scholar

60. Ibid., 4:239-40.

61. Ibid., 4:331.

62. Ibid., 4:430.

63. Gakov, “Laser Ray in 1926,” 166.

64. Kolobaeva, “Problema polozhitel ‘nogo geroia v romane A. N. Tolstogo ‘Aelita,“’ 55.

65. Tolstoi, Giperboloid, 4:434. 66. Ibid., 4:405.

67. Garin first appears as one of a pair of figures as alike “as two oars” (kak dva vesla). Ibid., 4:186.

68. Ibid., 4:228.

69. Kolobaeva, “Problema polozhitel ‘nogo geroia v romane A. N. Tolstogo ‘Aelita,“’ 55.

70. Tyklinskii, like Tolstoi, is a graduate of the Petersburg chemical institute, specializing as a chemical engineer, even briefly assisting Garin. It is very possible that Tolstoi borrowed this character's name from Professor Tikhvinskii, a chemical engineer shot by the Cheka in 1921 for allegedly receiving bribes from the Swedish Nobel company. See Bailes, , Technology and Society under Lenin and Stalin, 60. Google Scholar

71. Chukovskii cited in Varlamov, Aleksei Tolstoi, 282 and 360.

72. Gor'kii cited in Varlamov, Aleksei Tolstoi, 360.

73. His next film, Ego prizyv (His Cali, 1925) explicitly attacked the ethics of émigrés. See Gillespie, David, Early Soviet Cinema: Innovation, Ideology and Propaganda (London, 2000), 13.Google Scholar

74. For discussion of these points, see Christie, Ian, “Down to Earth: Aelita Relocated,” in Taylor, Richard and Christie, Ian, eds., Inside the Film Factory: New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema (London, 1994), 80 Google Scholar; Horton, Andrew J., “Science Fiction of the Domestic: Iakov Protazanov's Aelita,” Central Europe Review 1, no. 2 (10 January 2000), at www.ce-review.org/00/1/kinoeyel_horton.html (last accessed 1March 2013).Google Scholar

75. Stephan, Halina, “Aleksei Tolstoi's Aelita and the Inauguration of Soviet Science Fiction,” Canadian-American Slavic Studies 18, nos. 1-2 (1984): 73;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Christie, , “Down to Earth: Aelita Relocated,” 91 Google Scholar.

76. Snow, C. P., The Two Cultures (Cambridge, Eng., 1998), 37.Google Scholar

77. Saparin, V., Ischeznovenie inzhenera Bobrova: Nauchno-fantasticheskii rasskaz (Moscow, 1949), 16.Google Scholar

78. Ibid., 22-23.

79. For examples and analysis of this trend in fiction by Daniil Granin, Iurii Trifonov, and many others, see Marsh, Rosalind J., Soviet Fiction since Stalin: Science, Politics and Literature (London, 1986).Google Scholar